books - other - Thinking

Week One …

Okay, here’s what I forgot — if you’ve been writing and editing on a computer screen all day, it is very difficult to read anything else in the evening. It was a long week in the trenches — life at the Big Corporation is kind of hectic, and I was finishing a freelance copyediting job at the same time. Taking on all these freelance jobs while working full time might not have been the smartest idea I every had, but at least I’ll have enough money to renovate my shameful bathroom when I get to the other side (there wasn’t ever a shower in there before, and so 100 years of paint is peeling off the walls, to say nothing of the plywood patch under the toilet where the floor was all rotten — like I said, needs help).

However, I did manage to finish one book this week, Julia Briggs’ Virginia Woolf : An Inner Life. I know, I know, you’re thinking another Virginia Woolf biography? My favorite of the Woolf bios is the one by Hermione Lee, but what I loved about the Julia Briggs book is that it focuses on Woolf’s work. Too often the events of her life take over consideration of the work but Briggs, a British Woolf scholar, moves from book to book outlining the artistic and intellectual problems at hand, and how Woolf addressed them. Probably not the bio to start with if you don’t already know Woolf, but if you’re familiar with the novels, or with Woolf’s diaries and the delightfully witty (and sometimes bitchy) letters, then I think you’ll really enjoy this in-depth discussion of how Woolf’s artistic project developed and grew across a lifetime.

I’m also about half way through Dawn Powell’s A Time to Be Born and I’m loving it. I had a meltdown at Border’s a few weeks ago. I was standing in the fiction section (don’t get me started on the essays and biographies shelved erroneously in fiction) when I realized that it now seems women are only allowed to write books with hot pink covers featuring high-heeled shoes. What is the deal? Are women now only allowed to write chick lit? I couldn’t find one serious book by a woman shelved face out — not Gordimer, not Didion’s astonishing new memoir (which was shelved in fiction, much to my annoyance) not even any younger women writes like A.L. Kennedy or Mary Gaitskill. Now, it’s not that I don’t enjoy a light read once in a while, I do — but the overwhelming impression I got standing in the stacks that day was that if you’re a woman, you’d better be writing light social comedies that all end (as a true comedy should) with a wedding. Gack. What I’m loving about the Powell is that it’s a portrait of an unredeemed social climber — what seems so revolutionary at the moment is that Powell isn’t comdemning Amanda, nor is she redeeming her. Would a writer be able to publish a book these days that neither condemns nor redeems a character who isn’t “nice” to begin with? The curse of the writing programs — the notion that every work of fiction must have an “epiphany” — that every character must have a moment or “realization” in which clarity is bestowed on him or her. What I love about Powell, and Elizabeth Bowen, and Graham Greene is that their goal seems to be to portray human complexity, not to flatten it out.

I'm a writer and editor based in Livingston, Montana. I moved to Livingston from the San Francisco Bay area in 2002 in search of affordable housing and a small community with a vibrant arts community. I found both. LivingSmall details my experience buying and renovating a house, building a garden, becoming a part of this community. It also chronicles my efforts to rebuild my life after the sudden death of my younger brother, and closest companion, Patrick in a car wreck.

4 Comments on “Week One …

  1. I had the same disgusted reaction at Borders myself. I wanted to shelve my novel into a drawer when i realized that it would never see the light of day if the books at Borders are the indication of the state of women’s literature.

  2. Hi Charlotte. Haven’t checked out your blog in many many months, but surfing around tonight before bed and read all the postings on your main page and enjoyed them as always. I love your blog. Congrats on your successful Thanksgiving hosting. That’s impressive. I’m listening to Ann Patchett read Truth & Beauty on my commute these days and thinking — I think you mentioned on your blog liking that book, too. I’d love to hear Didion reading all of Magical Thinking in that understated, worn voice of hers. I’ve heard her read excerpts on the radio and it was striking.

    Leigh

  3. hey again

    so i’m finally digging my heels into didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. it’s smooth, and yes, captures her style in so many excellent ways – ways that us fans have come to expect and love and crave. but i’m still waiting for your blog about didion. and yes, i do think she could basically sell anything she wanted, no matter what. i’m not saying that’s wrong or right, but it’s a fascinating concept to me.

    ~katey

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